Rick Mofina - Free Fall

“What Zarathustra message?” Hugh asked.

“All right, some background,” Chuck said. “This is confidential, but I’m not surprised that some of you know this. Newslead’s aware of two threats, emails, by someone claiming responsibility for Shikra and EastCloud. The one Kate received after the EastCloud story broke was from someone identifying themselves as Zarathustra. They claimed responsibility and wanted us to do a story crediting them or they’d cause harm to another aircraft.”

No one spoke as Chuck provided more context on the Zarathustra and Kuwait emails. When he’d finished, silence followed.

“If you were already aware, fine,” Chuck said. “If you weren’t, my apologies. We had to keep this tight. So consider yourself informed. None of this has been reported because the emails are unsubstantiated and we don’t want to create alarm in the commercial airline industry. We’ve alerted the FBI, which is assessing them.”

Chuck paused, inviting any comments, before he continued.

“There’s a strategic reason I want to proceed this way with this story.”

“Are you going to share that with us?” Hugh asked.

“Later. For now, we’ll take this one step at a time and we will make no mention of the emails unless we have confirmation of their credibility. Any questions?”

None were voiced.

“All right, let’s get busy.”

Kate drafted a list of sources and experts she intended to go to for the story. She reached out to Nick Varner at the FBI for any updates. There were none. She called the NTSB, the FAA, EastCloud, Richlon-Titan, Shikra and Talal Nasser, her source with Kuwait’s Aviation Safety Department. Kate also called Erich, asking if he had any updates. He said he was working on it.

Soon, copy came in from London and Washington.

Noah Heatley’s team filed chilling commentary from cyber experts from around the world claiming they could-in theory-hijack a jetliner remotely. Industry officials refuted those claims.

Yardley in Washington confirmed that Congress had approved five hundred million dollars for the fiscal year 2002 to go to the Transportation Department, to allow the air industry to fortify cockpit doors, ensure continuous operation of aircraft transponders in an emergency, and to provide “other innovative technologies to enhance aircraft security,” which many industry insiders interpreted as remote-control technology.

Working with Hugh, Kate interviewed leading aviation experts. She hit pay dirt when she reached Fred Winston, who headed an airline industry consulting firm in Los Angeles.

“That technology the president discussed evolved into the Continuous Autopilot System,” Winston told her. “It works like this-should the crew feel the plane is under threat of being hijacked physically, they throw a switch, allowing remote control of the plane by the ground, traffic control, which can remotely employ other auto features to land the plane safely. That system cannot be interrupted by anyone or anything in the cockpit or on the ground.”

“So what happened to the technology?” Kate asked.

“Several major airlines hold patents on variations of it,” Winston said. “But it was never applied, installed, or used in the commercial air industry.”

“Why not?”

“Safety issues,” Winston said. “Chief among them is the fear that somehow someone could hack the system-override and take control of a jetliner.”

“Could that happen?”

“I know a lot of experts might disagree, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility,” Winston said. “In fact, there were rumors that the military, which can control aircraft remotely, had also developed a top secret remote auto-control system for landing distressed commercial jets, but that it somehow got leaked, or was stolen, creating fears it had fallen into the wrong hands and would be used to crash airliners.”

“What?”

“That’s the rumor, and many credible experts place it in the realm of conspiracy theories, so I don’t know how you would confirm that.”

Taking careful notes, Kate talked with Winston for several more minutes before thanking him and ending the call.

Pen clamped in her teeth, she began typing up the significant points of her interviews. As she weaved in the copy coming to her from Hugh, Washington and London, her heart raced.

This is shaping up to be a hell of a story.

Manhattan, New York

Kate’s face swam in and out of focus on the big screens throughout CTNB’s New York studio in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.

She was perched on a stool at the desk, shoulder-to-shoulder with two other panelists, Cal Marshall, a former NTSB investigator, and Stuart Shore, a retired commercial airline pilot, now an air security consultant.

“We’re just four people discussing commercial air security,” said Reese Baker, the CTNB moderator, after glancing up from the monitor under the glass desktop. “Forget the cameras and talk to me like you’re talking to neighbors over the back fence.”

“Twenty seconds, everyone!” a voice called out.

“Kate, that was a great article yesterday. Excellent.” Reese smiled.

Kate’s story had explored the president’s security promise of remote-control technology, but it had also raised the fear of its use against commercial airliners. She’d set it within the context of the Shikra crash at Heathrow and the EastCloud incident at LaGuardia.

Working closely with Chuck, and never mentioning the two threatening emails they believed were sent by Zarathustra, Kate had produced a nuanced article, a “situational,” on the theory that the two flights could have been targets of cyber hijacking. She’d backed it up with balanced, on-the-record comments from experts and built it on the president’s pledge.

Let’s see what happens, Chuck had said.

Interest in the story had been strong, yielding a high level of pickup by subscribers across the US, in Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia. It had prompted CTNB producers to request that Kate be a panelist the next day on Beyond the Headlines with Reese Baker.

The show’s guests had gone through makeup and a sound level test; camera angles had been checked and set. The theme music played, seconds were counted down and the program went live.

“Good afternoon. Mystery still envelops the Shikra Airlines crash at Heathrow, which claimed fifteen lives, and the chilling close call with an EastCloud flight to New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Could these two incidents be linked to potential hacking and a presidential promise to introduce remote-control technology in jetliners? That’s the subject of today’s panel. I’m Reese Baker and this is Beyond the Headlines .”

Reese turned from one camera and introduced a setup segment of CTNB news reports on the London and New York cases that ran for four minutes. When the producer threw it back to Reese, she introduced Cal Marshall, Stuart Shore and Kate.

“Let me take you back to September 27, 2001, two weeks after the terrorist attacks. President Bush, in a speech on aviation safety to air industry workers at O’Hare in Chicago, promised to introduce technology that would enable controllers on the ground-I’m quoting the president-‘to take over distressed aircraft and land it by remote control.’ Stuart, I’ll start with you. As a former commercial pilot and expert on airline security, does this technology exist?”

“Yes and no. Several airlines have the patents for it, but it hasn’t been applied in the commercial airline industry. Military applications are another issue, with drones and other types of aircraft, but the technology we’re talking about here, for commercial aircraft, is not employed today.”